


Do-Over

by anticyclone



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 03:12:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5811463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/pseuds/anticyclone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Mabel, do you ever wish you could just start a day over?" - Dipper and Mabel, trying to investigate a monster appearance, are not having such a great morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do-Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeriel/gifts).



> I hope you like it, Aeriel!

"Mabel, do you ever wish you could just start a day over?"

"I don't think it's going that badly, bro bro."

If there had been a camera for Dipper to look into, he would have.

Unfortunately the camera was somewhere on the forest floor. It could be right under them, or it could be half a mile away, Dipper wasn't really sure. The last few minutes were a blur of panicked running. Not that the run had been for much. Whatever was chasing them had given up, or peeled off, or found something more exciting to run after. So now they were just sweaty, and panting for breath, and stuck here in the middle of the forest.

Upside down.

His toes were starting to tingle. When they'd first blundered into the trap, which snapped around their ankles and yanked them a good ten feet into the air, the rope had cut painfully into Dipper's ankles. But now he could barely feel it. Sweat kept dripping into his eye and that was more annoying anyway.

He took a deep breath. "Okay. Do you have any idea of how to get out of here?"

"Nature provides," Mabel said, pressing her hands to her heart. "We just have to find something that can cut us down."

"All I see is dirt. And trees. And my hat."

"And that big red button over there!"

Dipper tried to look over where she was pointing and ended up twisting on the rope, making everything go blurry for a moment. He only stopped when Mabel grabbed his arm and their combined weight made them rock to a halt. When everything cleared up he could see a big red button on a tree to Mabel's left. It was wired to a hook, and tied to the hook were two ropes. He followed the ropes up above them and, sure enough, down again and around their ankles.

"Great. So now we all have to do is somehow reach the button."

Mabel stretched out both her arms. "I think… I can do it…"

Dipper sighed. "Mabel, that thing is at least five feet away. You can't reach it."

"You're so negative."

"Negative? We're tied upside down in the trees!"

"It could be worse! It could be quicksand!"

"That thing is still out there! It could be the one who set this trap! It definitely had hands. Like, six hands," Dipper said, shuddering. Mabel had just wanted to find out what was leaving muddy handprints all over the trees whenever it rained. It had seemed like a harmless way to kill an afternoon, and a chance to maybe have something interesting to tell Ford at dinner.

"If that's all you can think about we're definitely never going to get out of here," Mabel said, shoving at him.

He swung a little and shoved back at her. "Oh, like that's going to help!"

"Oh my gosh, Dipper, it is!" This time, when Mabel shoved him, it actually find of hurt. Partly because she was laughing as the force of her shove swung her backwards. Towards the red button. Oh! Dipper laughed, too, and shoved his sister when she swung back towards him. It was short work after that. It took a few more shoves, but they swung further and further with each one, and then Mabel slapped her palm against the big red button and yelled "Ha!"

There was a click as, somewhere up above them, their ropes released.

They just had time to inhale and scream before they dropped.

***

It wasn't a long drop, but it did kind of hurt. Everything went black for a minute, at least for Dipper.

He opened his eyes again, slowly, to see Mabel crouching over him. She was holding three copies of his hat out to him. "Dipper, are you okay?"

He blinked, and the three hats became one. "Uh. Yeah." He rubbed his forehead, sitting up slowly, and smiled when Mabel put his hat down on his head for him. Nothing hurt that much, so they couldn't have hit the ground that hard. "Hey, at least we got down."

Mabel grinned and shook the leaves out of her hair. "And with hardly a concussion to be seen!" She held out both hands and pulled Dipper to his feet. "Let's go find the camera."

"What if that… thing… is waiting?" Dipper asked, even as he trailed after her. He did want to see if they'd gotten any good shots of the creature. Maybe Ford would know more about it. Dipper still hadn't gotten a good look at any of the other journals yet. Maybe there would even be something in there about mysterious rope traps in the woods and what might have set them.

"Grunkle Stan's been teaching me to punch things," Mabel said, proudly. Dipper raised both eyebrows at her - when had this been happening? - and she flapped one hand at him. "Just the creepy eyeless dummy in the Shack. But it's probably the same when the thing is moving."

"Why hasn't Stan taught me how to punch things?"

"You have to ask him." Mabel gave him an exasperated look. When he just stared at her, she rolled her eyes and punched the air in front of them. Then she jumped up onto a log and did a couple of more punches. It looked really cool, like maybe there should be some kind of theme music playing. Mabel even flipped her hair when she was done.

"Oh." He paused, then thrust his fist into the air. "Like that?"

"Eesh." Mabel cringed. "You'll have to practice on the dummy."

"But it's creepy. I feel like it's watching me!"

"It doesn't have eyes."

"That's why - Oh, there's the camera."

***

When Mabel tromped through the front door of the Shack, she had more leaves on her head than hair. Next to her, Dipper had his hat and the banged-up video camera clutched to his chest. Stan looked up at them from the cash register and raised both eyebrows. "Where have you kids been?"

"Getting tied up in a tree," Mabel said, while Dipper said, "Getting chased by a six-handed monster."

"One of these days you're gonna get hurt if you aren't careful," Grunkle Stan warned them.

"We got down from the tree," they said, together.

Stan shrugged, watching them walk through the room towards the stairs. Mabel shed leaves with each step. She would probably have to clean them up later, if Soos didn't decide the Shack needed a leaf monster display. "As long as you don't wander off alone, I guess," Stan said.

Mabel grinned. "Not a problem, Grunkle Stan."

"Mabel, we need to hook the camera up to the TV so we can watch the playback."

"I'm good at spotting things in the background," Mabel explained to Stan. "It's all about the colors."

"Mabel!"

"Coming!"

When she ran into the living room, Dipper was already fiddling with the camera cords. She sat down on the floor in front of the TV to get the best view. After a minute, static and then blurry trees appeared on the screen. Mabel winced as the camera shot bounced around until past-Dipper managed to steady the camera. He swung it around enough so she could see past-her waving at present-them, and then past-Dipper turned the camera onto himself.

"Today we're trying to find whatever's leaving the handprints after it rains."

"Ooh! Ooh, Dipper look at that!"

"Is it more handprints?"

"No, just a really cool mushroom."

Present-Mabel laughed at her past self. Dipper - both of him - just rolled his eyes. Present-Dipper sat down next to her to watch the video. It was several minutes of them walking through the woods making observations about plants and the utter lack of mysterious handprints. When something brown and blurry swept over the screen, past-Mabel-and-Dipper and present-Mabel-and-Dipper both screamed.

That's when stuff got weird. Well. Weirder than they'd already been.

On screen, past-Mabel-and-Dipper ran through the woods. Present-Dipper fast forwarded through this part and didn't stop until the camera had gone still. "This must be where I dropped it. We're not going to see anything now."

"You dropped it closer than I thought," Mabel said. The TV showed mostly woods, but also their hands, just at the edge of the frame. She could hear past-them groaning about being hung up in the trees. Then past-Dipper said, "Mabel, do you ever wish you could just start a day over?"

***

It's all about the colors.

When Mabel put her foot down on top of a particularly squishy mushroom, she had the distinct feeling that she had done this before. Then her sweater sleeve snagged on a tree and that felt familiar, too. But it wasn't until Dipper looked over his shoulder and yanked her down, out of the path of the creature swiping at them, that she realized she had done this before.

Each step seemed more and more familiar until they couldn't hear or see the creature anymore and they were coming up on a log that made Mabel's stomach drop. When they jumped over it she recognized the trees in front of them. And because she knew it was there, she could see the brown rope dangling against the brown bark, too.

"Dipper, wait!"

She threw her arm out just in time to keep them from stepping into the clearing. Dipper stumbled, though, and they both fell to their knees. The camera slipped from his hands and bounced ahead of them, right into a pile of leaves hiding one of the rope coils. It immediately fastened around the camera and yanked it up into the air.

For a minute she and her brother just laid there, staring up at the trap, and then Dipper turned to her. "How did you know that was there?"

"Uh. Can you believe we've been here before?"

"I don't remember coming out here before," Dipper said.

"I mean, we were literally just here," Mabel tried to explain. "Like, we already did this before."

"You could just say that you spotted the trap." Dipper jumped up trying to get his camera back from the trap. He wasn't nearly tall enough for that to work, though. He did a double-take when Mabel shimmied up the tree at the edge of the clearing to slap her hand against the big red button. The rope holding the camera dropped, and so did the other rope at its side.

Dipper held the camera in both hands and gaped at her. "We really did this before?"

"Uh-huh. Now with less head injury!"

***

"Ugh. Time loops. Never know them until you're already in them." Grunkle Stan eyed them from behind the cash register.

Mabel gasped. "You've been in them before?"

"What? Really? Did you take notes?"

Stan rolled his eyes. "I didn't take notes on anything that wouldn't help re-build the portal, Dipper," he said. He sighed when Dipper's shoulders slumped. "Ah, well, it's not like my memory's totally shot yet. What d'you want to know?"

"What time loops have you been in? How do you know they're loops? How many times do they repeat?" Dipper asked, scrambling to look in his pockets and then the counter for a pen and something to write on while Stan was still feeling generous.

Mabel frowned. "How do you know they're over?" she asked.

"Whatever you do," Stan said, ignoring Dipper crawling over the counter to snag a pen from underneath the register, "don't do whatever it was you did right before the loop started. Even if it was a good thing. It'll send you straight back to the beginning." He scowled. "You have no idea how long that took to figure out. Would've helped if Ford ever wrote anything about that down…"

"Ooh! We should watch the video," Dipper said, popping back up. "Maybe we'll see a clue--"

"No!" Mabel blurted. They both stared at her, and she grinned sheepishly at them. "I don't want to run from that thing again."

"Oh. Well, in that case." Dipper popped the tape out of the camera and tossed it into the trash. "Now, Grunkle Stan, what was the first time loop you ever experienced?"

"I'm gonna regret this, aren't I?" Stan asked. But he moved over when Mabel laughed and climbed up on the counter to sit next to Dipper and comment on his handwriting as he took notes. This was way more interesting than six-handed monsters.


End file.
